KATHMANDU: Nepal’s family law is once again in the spotlight, as the Ministry of Law’s latest proposals to amend the Criminal Code and Civil Code spark debate over the principles that should guide marriage, divorce, and women’s rights in the 21st century.
The Ministry insists the changes are aimed at upholding constitutional equality. Critics, however, warn they risk dismantling long-standing protections for women, protections embedded in Nepal’s legal system for decades as part of its distinctive blend of tradition and modernity.
At the heart of the dispute lies a fundamental question: should Nepal’s marriage laws be based on absolute gender equality in the Western sense, or should they preserve the country’s unique legal philosophy, which grants women specific protections even if it means treating them differently from men?
Nepal’s family law has evolved through three major phases: the Criminal Code of 1910 BS under Jang Bahadur Rana, the 2020 BS revision under King Mahendra, and the post-constitution Civil Code of 2074 (2017).
Neither the 1910 nor the 2020 codes offered men and women equal rights by contemporary standards; they reflected a hierarchical, feudal society. The 1910 code openly reinforced caste divisions and sanctioned gender inequality, while the 2020 version maintained several discriminatory provisions under a centralized monarchy.
The 2074 code, drafted after the Constitution guaranteed women’s rights, introduced important reforms, but it, too, stopped short of establishing full gender parity. The Ministry’s new amendment package proposes several changes that have provoked intense debate.
One of the most contentious is the removal of the legal distinction between polygamy and polyandry. At present, a married woman can remarry without facing criminal charges, whereas a man who marries a second wife risks one to five years in prison.
The Ministry argues that abolishing this distinction aligns the law with Article 18’s equality clause. Opponents counter that this erases an exemption designed to protect women’s autonomy in a patriarchal society, disregarding the historical reasons for its inclusion.
Another proposal would expand the definition of rape to allow women to be prosecuted for the offence. While the Ministry frames this as modernizing the law, critics say it ignores biological realities and Nepal’s own jurisprudence, which recognizes rape overwhelmingly as a crime committed by men against women. Police data contains no recorded cases of “rape by women,” making the proposed criminalization seems both unnecessary and potentially harmful.
Perhaps the most misunderstood provision in the draft concerns polygamy. A wave of public outrage has been fueled by the claim that men will now be allowed multiple wives. In reality, the controversial clause merely stipulates that if a man’s first wife is pregnant or has borne children, a conviction for bigamy will not automatically dissolve the first marriage. The second marriage remains invalid, but the provision allows the first wife to decide whether to end the marriage. Far from expanding men’s marital rights, legal analysts argue, it strengthens the first wife’s position.
The amendments also seek to reduce penalties for sexual relations with 16–18-year-olds in cases where the age gap between the parties is small and the relationship is consensual, a change sometimes described as a “Romeo and Juliet” provision.
Many fear it could normalize underage sexual activity and weaken protections for adolescent girls. Another provision would extend the legal limit for abortion from 25 to 28 weeks in specific cases, such as pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
These debates cut to the core of Nepal’s legal identity. Historically, family law here has not simply copied Western models but has blended Hindu jurisprudence, customary laws of various ethnic communities, and selected modern legal principles.
One of its most distinctive features is the principle of positive discrimination: women are sometimes treated differently from men, but in ways designed to offer them greater protection. This is reflected in special inheritance rights for women, reserved political representation, and earlier legal provisions that allowed women to defend their honour against sexual assault without facing criminal liability, a right removed in the 2074 code despite the Supreme Court having upheld its constitutionality.
For those opposed to the Ministry’s approach, the danger lies in replacing this philosophy with a rigid model of absolute equality. They argue that treating men and women identically in the law does not always produce genuine equality in a society where gendered power imbalances persist. Maternity protections, political reservations, and exemptions in family law, they say, exist precisely because women face systemic disadvantages that “equal treatment” alone cannot overcome.
The public debate has also been shaped by selective outrage. Women’s rights groups have mobilised against the mistaken belief that the amendments would legalise multiple wives for men, yet they have been quieter on changes that could more concretely undermine women’s legal standing, such as criminalizing women for bigamy, introducing “rape by women” as a crime, or reducing sentences for offences involving teenage girls. Legal analysts suggest that this pattern reflects a larger problem in Nepal’s rights discourse: an overreliance on social media narratives rather than detailed scrutiny of legislative texts.
Beyond the headline-grabbing provisions, the Ministry’s proposals have also reopened questions the law has long avoided, such as the legal status of live-in relationships, the potential re-legalisation of surrogacy, and the ethics of foreign adoption under Nepal’s dharma putra/dharma putri provisions. Each of these issues intersects with questions of women’s agency, children’s rights, and cultural preservation.
Family law governs some of the most intimate aspects of Nepali life — marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody, and sexual consent. Every reform risks upsetting the delicate balance between deeply rooted traditions and the pressures of modernisation.
If the Ministry’s proposals pass in their current form, they could reshape not only the rights of men and women, but also the underlying philosophy of Nepal’s legal system. For some, the real danger is that in chasing a rhetoric of equality, Nepal may discard protections that acknowledge and address women’s particular vulnerabilities in a still-patriarchal society.
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